Top Ten Movies Based on Comic Books

by Nicholas Robinson

As the newest comic-book movie “The Losers” came out this week. I have decided to start off my weekly Top Tens with *drum roll* The “Top Ten Movies Based on Comic Books”. Well I have never actually done a top ten before so here goes nothing.

10. Hellboy II – The Golden Army [2008] (based on the Dark Horse Comics’ character Hellboy)

Guillermo del Toro is a great director. He did a wonderful job on Hellboy and Pan’s Labryinth. Now, he has made a wonderful sequel to a good movie. In this movie, the comic-ness of it is very obvious as shown in the characters and the way they look but it is still really good. However, what I have said is not why it is on my list. This movie made it onto my top ten not because of Ron Perlman or Jeffrey Tambor’s awesomeness, but because of the villain, Prince Nuada, played by Luke Goss. This villain, I think is one of the best comic-book villains of all time and he was made this way by the writer and director of this movie Guillermo del Toro. Watch this movie, not for the action or witty dialogue, but for the villain.

9. Iron Man [2008] (based on the Marvel comic of the same name)

I have always loved to read comics and Iron Man has been one of my favourite Marvel comics ever (Please note that I was born in the 90’s so don’t comment on how Sgt. Fury or whatever comic from way back when was much better, I haven’t read it so I can’t have an opinion). This movie lived up to every one of my expectations and more. Robert Downey Jr (or “The Man” as I call him) is amazing as Tony Stark aka Iron Man. He portrays Stark’s arrogance and charm with superb brilliance and should appear in every Marvel comic movie if just to recruit everyone to the Avengers. The other people in this movie are good as well but hey, if u put a Ferrari next to a Bugatti, the Bugatti just overshadows the Ferrari so ye.

8. Batman Begins [2005] (based on DC Comics’ character Batman)

This traditional comic-book movie character had been on a downward spiral after Joel Schumacher took over the franchise from Tim Burton but Christopher Nolan swooped in on his Bat-Glider and carried the franchise to the top of the world with this reboot starring Christian Bale. The acting in this movie is phenomenal (save Katie Holmes but hey, for her it’s actually half decent) and is only bested by the writing and directing. When I saw this movie in theaters, I was saying to myself (in between the thoughts of how awesome it was) that this wasn’t the Batman that I remember. Even though the classic view of rich, pretty boy Bruce Wayne was tossed out on his ass for the new one, after re-watching it I realized that I preferred it. In fact, I almost completely forgot that there was a Batman movie before this. That is how good that this movie is.

7. V for Vendetta [2006] (based on the graphic novel of the same name)

“Remember, Remember, the 5th of November”. I only saw this quite recently, and it blew me away. Before watching this, I had seen the Wachowski Bros do The Matrix trilogy and Speed Racer, so I was seriously pumped for this movie. They delivered. Throughout the movie, there was no point in which I was not entertained. Whether, it was an action scene, a speech, buildings exploding or a comedic scene, my eyes and brain never once wanted to switch off during this movie. This movie deserves to be number one on many lists, just not this one unfortunately.

6. Oldboy [2003] (loosely based on the graphic novel of the same name)

This is the first movie I saw from Chan-wook Park and let me warn you, it is weird, very weird. This movie is about a man who has been locked away for fifteen years and goes on a mission of revenge for five days. As someone who likes to watch movies with subtitles, it was amazing. I tried to watch it dubbed in English and it just wasn’t as good. My recommendation is to dust off the reading glasses and watch this in Korean with English subtitles to get the full experience.